Local Shops. Local Shoppers. Agora Is a Search Engine for Discovering Local Products
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Local Shops. Local Shoppers. Agora is a search engine for discovering local products. agorashoplocal.com Founding Story. When coming out of class in Harvard Square, Allie remembered the need for a black dress. She thought to herself, why Why cant I just can’t I search for it in stores nearby? search “black dress” on my This problem continued to persist for phone and know where items beyond just clothing. they are in stores near me? Allie stumbled upon the demand for... a search engine for Allie Walsh local inventory. Founder & CEO of Agora Two Ways to Shop. If a search engine for local inventory existed, we could combine the best aspects of both retail experiences. In-Person Retail. Online Shopping. Immediate gratification and ability Able to see across multiple retailers; to use. can compare items/prices easily. No shipping delay. Higher certainty about getting a “good deal”. Uncertainty about whether you will find desired product and whether you are No physical interaction with product getting the best deal. upon purchase. Wasted time going from store to store. Delayed gratification; 2 day shipping or longer. Lack of price transparency from inability to compare across vendors Delay and ambiguity with returns and in person. package tracking. The Problem. 70% of In-Person Retail. stores find Local stores struggle due to Amazon’s inventory dominance and COVID-19. They need help optimization to generating more internet and foot traffic. be a problem* Inventory optimization is also a problem. The data generated from searching Agora can help stores optimize their inventory. Inventory systems are a highly fragmented market with many stores using 53% of For Consumers. spreadsheets or physical mediums. Consumers Consumers want to shop local. The main would rather reasons are convenience and the immediate buy from a gratification as outlined on the previous local business* slide. Agora gives the consumer the ability to shop local with the convenience and searchability or e-commerce. *source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/consumers-want-to-support-their-local-economy-by- supporting-local-businesses-according-to-a-survey-by-zypmedia-301066610.html The Solution. Agora provides a way for consumers to search across the inventory of local stores. It also will provide stores with a robust inventory system informed by local demand insights from the search engine. As you’ll see on the platform, users can search a map with products and stores. The Problem. There are multiple ways to monetize Agora. We hope to monetize on both the store and consumer side, creating a double-sided marketplace. For Stores. For stores, they can pay a subscription to be on the platform, a subscription to the inventory software, pay for premium placement on our home page and search results, pay for ads, and additional insights on our inventory software. For Consumers. For consumers, if we allow consumers to purchase through the Agora platform, we can take a cut of the transaction. In 2018… $3.6 Trillion In total retail sales in the US. $513.61 Billion In E-Commerce. $3 Trillion In local spending. If we assume agora ad revenue can ultimately account for .5% of that local consumer spend, annual revenue is $15b per year. Strategy & Precedent (Milo.com). To start building Agora, we are following in the footsteps of a company called Milo.com. Milo was a local inventory search engine that was acquired by E-Bay in 2010 for $75m. To create an initial influx of supply on the platform, Milo scraped the websites of their target stores. We will execute a combination of scraping and curation of products to start. Ultimately, we want stores to upload their items directly to Agora. There will be a store portal that allows them to do so. Eventually, we will have our own inventory software that updates in real-time and optimizes store inventory based on local demand insights from the search platform. We are launching Agora with… 25 Stores in Boston The Competition. Square is who we are afraid of most. SMBs love their POS and more are adopting their inventory system. Ideally, we want to integrate with their inventory API and partner with them. Other competitors include Store No8, Amazon, Google Shopping, Ebay Local (bought milo.com in 2012), Glovo in Europe, and Favor or Spreetail in Austin. Fundraising Agora started with Y-Combinator’s $150k pre-seed investment during the S19 batch. We are kicking off a raise of ~$1m seed investment in April 2021. Hire a full-time team of Advertise to both stores Develop an in-house engineers (~3 to start) and users inventory & product upload system for stores Meet the Founder & Her Team. Allie Walsh Founder & CEO of Agora The founder, Allie Walsh, graduated from Harvard with honors in 2018, concentrating in Economics. After Harvard, Allie worked as an investor at the investment firm General Atlantic. At GA, Allie worked across their technology and consumer teams, gaining industry expertise in e-commerce infrastructure. After GA, Allie was a part of Y-Combinator’s Summer 2019 class. Full Service Digital Agency To develop the beta product for Agora, Allie works with GoingClear, a full service digital agency based in Boston, MA. .